


Among the Living

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-18
Updated: 2011-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-27 12:43:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's idea of a "real life" has been somewhat revised.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Among the Living

**Author's Note:**

> This is one section of a seven-part series of vignettes (“Seven Deaths”) that I’m working on, but I thought I’d just post this alone as a first fic. I’m writing short things because 1)I wonder what it would be like if someone wrote the Winesburg, Ohio of SherlockBBC fic (probably someone has!) and 2)I can’t do plot.
> 
> Also thought about this while writing: the two-line crime scene would be a fun exercise.
> 
> Not Brit-picked so I would (humbly) welcome any aid in that area. (and anything else anyone wants to say.)

 

 

“ _Has the world changed, or have I changed?”—The  Smiths, “The Queen is Dead”_

 

I don’t save lives anymore.  Or rather I don’t save them in the way I used to. I’m getting used to it. Most days at the surgery are ordinary-- back pain, feverish colds, coughs--but once in awhile someone comes in bleeding.  Today two patients,one male and one female, both young and vibrant and only marginally ill, actually flirted with me, not something that tended to happen in combat hospitals.  I think about the sorts of things I hand out (antibiotics, sedatives, anodynes). I think about how this seems less and less like my real life these days.  I think about what I flirt with daily, in my real life.

***

We’re standing over a young Asian man who’s very dead and in a suit and his stocking feet at the back of a Thai restaurant in Soho. Cause of death as yet unknown. (Shoelessness?) On the man’s mobile, a text (received, not sent): “I’m dead.”

“When you’ve only got two words, better make them good,”  Sherlock says.

***

“Oh, what now?” Sherlock says, irritably. Mycroft has texted twelve times and then called.

He puts his hand over his mobile like it’s an old-fashioned receiver and mouths to me,

“Want to see a dead diplomat?”

***

Sherlock chases a particularly nasty young criminal through a good stretch of central London. In the end I have to shoot the bastard, much to Lestrade’s dismay. I don’t kill him, though.

I also have to grab Sherlock by the collar and haul him, dripping and bleeding, from the debris-choked, brownish water of the Thames.

There are stitches (nice ones, if I may say so) and some blankets for the mild hypothermia, but thanks to Thames21 no infestation of virulent microorganisms.

***

I contemplate how best to describe the water of the Thames on the blog. (Brownish or more cement-coloured? Was there froth?)

What?

***

Sherlock apparently thinks that I’m what they might call in American Westerns and police procedurals, a “gun hand.” I don’t know what sort of hand I am, but I guess I’m all right with a gun in it. (Happier with it shoved in my waistband, though.)

“Guns don’t kill people,” Sherlock says to me over breakfast, but he doesn’t finish the thought.

***

We find a junkie, a member of Sherlock’s homeless network, dead in an alley. She’s dark-haired, under thirty, maybe once beautiful. Cause of death is fairly obvious, but I can tell Sherlock would rather it were a crime scene.

“Her name is Eleri,” he says to me.

“She was Welsh,” he adds.

I’m a bit slow to recognize the eulogy.

***

Dark blue evening gown, almost black. Necklace, silver, with a tree engraved on it. Long black hair.  Long black coat with black feathers round the hood. You can’t help but stare.

“Who’s that?” I say to Sherlock.

“No-one you want to know, “he says.

Obviously he does.

***

Sherlock kicks open (sounds like) the bathroom door and stands there shouting my name as if there’s either a dire plumbing emergency or he’s being attacked by brigands while trying to shower. (not unprecedented, not entirely).  When I bolt downstairs he’s standing there in a towel, soaking wet, water draining off into the passageway.

"What the…are you alright?” I say.

“What time is it? “ he asks. I can hear the shower running.

“Half eight. What’s gone wrong?”

“Would you just…” he says, “go in and see if the wood ticks in the refrigerator have died yet?”

Wood ticks. Refrigerator.

While I’m walking slowly away in a daze he calls after me,

"Right, let me know how many are still alive.”

***

"Sod off, why don't you Anderson?" Sherlock says, congenially enough. And then, as Anderson shuts the door in huff, Sherlock pitches forward in a dead faint, nearly hitting his head on a late-Victorian antique wardrobe.

What does it say about me as medical professional that the first thing I think is that I'm glad Anderson has gone, as Sherlock wouldn't want him to know that he's just passed out at a crime scene?

He’s fine, just hasn’t eaten in five or six days.

***

Text from SH, the address of a Chinese restaurant in Camden. Pulse leaps; try to slow it. Still feel guilty getting excited over crimes. Open drawer, look at handgun, close drawer. Think better of it, open drawer again, shove handgun in waistband. Coat on, out the door in less than five. Blinding sunshine. Tell cab driver to leg it, keep the change.  Twenty minutes, not bad. Burst in the door.  Scarlet banquettes.  Multi-colored lights. Sherlock looking moodily out the window, soup and tea on the table. Sit down, lean forward.

“Who’s dead?”  

Sherlock hands me a menu.

“What?” 

He looks at me as though I’m the biggest idiot on the planet.

“I wanted to have lunch with you,” he says.

Oh.

***

Sherlock is a master of the dismissive hand gesture. I’m learning. His say, “Stop using my oxygen molecules, “and “Why not donate it; you’re obviously not using it.”

Mine are more like, “Well, that’s your funeral.” Working on it.

***

“Sherlock,” I’m saying, “You’re no use to anyone if you’re dead.”

“That is precisely not the point,” he says. He has blood on his shoes. (not his.)

“Well, what is the point then?” I say,” Perhaps if you explained it to me I wouldn’t be so full-on stupid all the time.”

He’s taught me to read microexpressions; I catch a flicker—maybe-- of injury in his face.

***

Death wish? _Wrong._

How can I explain to John that on occasion the future is just irrelevant?

***

Do I take pride in my work? No. Not the word I would choose.

But John does. 

***

I shouldn't have had that second pint at the pub. I've worked late all week and I’ve got a cold and am exhausted --and alcohol and knackered immune system and exhaustion are certain to bring on a bad night.

They do.

Back at Baker Street I take the stairs slowly, unlock the door, say hello to Sherlock. He’s sitting at the table reading a book on retro realist criminology: a portent of oncoming boredom. No case he will likely need that for. He says he’s eaten, though I doubt it.  He looks me over as I’m hanging up my coat. (Nothing else in the flat is in its proper place, but I might as well try.)

“The second one was a bad idea,” he says.

I wave him off. Not in the mood for deduction tonight.

“Going to bed,” I say.  Right.

Sometimes when I sleep I die and wake up again gasping for breath, with a sickening thump and rotor wash, a hard landing in a hot zone. Sometimes I have to run to the toilet and vomit. Sometimes I’m just disoriented and sweating and terrified and humiliated.

Sherlock has never appeared in my room after one of these episodes, but he has now, or I think he has, standing there in the dark with his hands together, thinking.

He puts on the light, so he must be there.

I take a deep breath and try to calm the shakes and then--I really don't want to do this in front of him, but ah, I can't help it-- I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around myself. It helps sometimes.

He blinks as though he's waking up.

“Oh,” he says, “can I...”

“You could get me some water," I say, though I don't want any.

He blinks again.

”I'm not completely inept, you know, John,” he says.

Sometimes I’m guilty of falling back on what is most obvious about him. It may be easier, but I know it isn’t just. Actually, and worse, it isn’t kind.

“Sorry,” I say.

He fetches my desk chair up next to the bed. He stays until I’m not shaking so much and he can tell me so.

“That’s much better,” he says.

Observation is a kind of gift. It’s not sympathy (which, anyway, I don’t want); it’s not comfort, but a generous act nonetheless.

 

 _  
**fin (for now)**   
_


End file.
